Friday, 28 March 2014

Going Back in Time, It’s a Caroline Flashback

Fifty years
ago today the sound of British radio changed forever with the launch of Radio
Caroline. It was the start of a brief three year starburst of offshore radio
activity. Derring-do on the high seas, an explosion of British pop music,
swinging jingles and flouting the law. For those broadcasting and listening it
was an exciting time.

Pirate radio
kick-started the careers of dozens of DJs who’d go on to work for Auntie Beeb
or the early ILR stations, and a fair few TV continuity announcers too. The
mid-Atlantic style was heavily influenced by aping Stateside DJs (not to
mention a great deal of Australian and Canadian input), liberal use of PAMS
jingles, self-op desks and strip programming all set the template when Radio
1 hit the airwaves in late 1967.

Caroline
wasn’t the first offshore pirate station, there’d been Scandinavian and Dutch
based offerings such as Radio Mercur, Radio Nord and Radio Veronica. But
Caroline made history as the first station to offer an English service with
live shows from the ship, trumping rivals Radio Atlanta on air by 46 days.

The first
voice on Radio Caroline that Saturday back in 1964 was Simon Dee – “this is
Radio Caroline on 199, your all-day music station” – though technically he was
beaten to it, if you count the test transmissions they made on Good Friday, by
a taped show from John Junkin. The comedy writer and one third of Hello Cheeky was briefly a Caroline DJ
recording shows in London with the tapes being shipped out to the station for
later broadcast.

But
listening back to the airchecks of the fledgling Caroline service you’d be hard
pressed to spot the difference between it and the BBC Light Programme,
punctuating the pop tunes are orchestral pieces, easy listening classics, show
tunes and jazz. The pace was slow, subdued almost, there was no chat just
straight announcements and, for the first month, no commercials (the first main
ad being for Bulova watches, “when you know what makes a watch tick you’ll buy
a Bulova”). But the attraction of an
all-music station proved an immediate success: over 20,000 letters were
received at Caroline’s London offices during the first fortnight and the
audience was estimated at seven million.

Here are
some clips from that opening weekend:

Following
the Caroline/Atlanta merger (forced by the lack of advertising) in the summer
of 64 there were two Caroline ships, one anchored off Harwich and one off
Ramsey. DJ Keith Skues recalled “Caroline North was a very successful station
and had a large audience, the DJs on the north ship had complete freedom from
Ronan [O’Rahilly] to choose and play the music they know their listeners wanted
to hear. [Allan] Crawford was very keen to ensure, as a music publisher, that
his Merit Music records were regularly played on Caroline South. The station
played more middle-of-the-road music with songs from shows and film
soundtracks.”

Meanwhile … Back on
Land

For those
that remember the 60s pirates the reason they tuned in was to hear pop music no
matter what the time of day. The BBC was hidebound
by needle-time restrictions and MU agreements. But what, exactly, did the BBC
offer when Caroline launched? Checking the Easter issue of the Radio Times (and the listings for the Light Programme) offers some clues, though,
of course, I’ve no idea as to what records they did or didn’t play.

On the
Saturday it was light music all the way until 9 a.m. when it was time for
Children’s Favourite’s. Perhaps guest presenter, Blue Peter’s Christopher
Trace, played some pop along with Nellie the Elephant?

There was
guaranteed pop at 10 a.m. with two hours of Saturday
Club. Brian Matthews guests were Cliff and the Shadows, Mark Wynter, The
Hollies and Kenny Ball. Brain also popped up on Sunday morning with Easy Beat featuring Adam Faith, The
Bachelors, The Caravelles and, no doubt providing some cover versions, the
Johnny Howard Band.

At the
moment that Caroline launched the Light Programme had Exhibition Choice, one of those occasional shows that used to come
from either the Ideal Home Exhibition or the Radio Show, this one was hosted
by John Ellison.

Mixing
records and comedy clips at lunchtime was Jack Jackson’s Record Roundabout and in between the sport Three’s Company with the Polka Dots and The Searchers.There was pop of the European variety at 6.30
p.m. as Katie Boyle hosted Pop Over Europe.

Meanwhile on
Easter Sunday there’ll no doubt have been a handful of current tunes amongst
the record requests on the most listened to show on radio at that time, Two-Way Family Favourites, which
regularly pulled in 18 million listeners.

The only
guaranteed 100% pop record show was Pick
of the Pops with Fluff, back then running at just an hour between 4 and 5
p.m. , with that week’s chart seeing Can’t
Buy Me Love entering at number one. And
that was it as far as the weekend was concerned. During the week how about Parade of the Pops (Bob Miller and the
Millermen with guests Craig Douglas and Jan Burnette) or The Joe Loss Pop Show (with vocals from Ross McManus and guests
Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas).Other
than that you could take pot luck on Housewives’
Choice or Twelve O’Clock Spin.

Later in
1964 came Pop Inn, followed in 1965
by Newly Pressed and Swing Into Summer which became the daily
1-hour plus Swingalong in Autumn
1966. By then even the Radio Times was
minded to publish a Q&A asking “why no continuous pop?” The answer:
“Because nearly all of it is on records. The BBC has to buy the right to
broadcast them. It’s rationed to a fixed number of hours each week. That’s
called ‘needle-time’. The BBC can’t buy any more.”At the time the three networks had a total
needle-time of 75 hours a week.Concluding, just a little exasperatedly, the answer was “getting more
needle-time isn’t something the BBC can decide by itself. A lot of other people
have a say in it. In fact the other people have the last word.”

Pirate Memories

In 2009
Johnnie Walker recreated the sounds of the pirate era (though the pretence of broadcasting from onboard ship wore thin after a time) on Radio 2’s Pirate Johnnie Walker series.In this first clip the guest DJ is Emperor
Rosko.

Working on
both Caroline and London was Ed Stewart.

On both the
South and North ships was Dave Lee Travis.

From the
final programme from 27 December 2009 is Dave Cash who joined Radio London
within days of its launch in December 1964. There’s also a tribute to Mike
Ahern who died a couple of months earlier.

From 19
April the Radio Ship will be playing out old pirate radio programmes:
http://www.theradioship.net/BBC Radio 2
has a 2-part documentary about the offshore pirates that airs next month (I
don’t have full details at the time of writing).

On Easter
Monday BBC Radio Norfolk has a full day of celebrations and are wheeling out
DJs that were associated with the pirate stations: Ray Clark, Andy Archer, Tom Edwards, Keith Skues and Colin Berry.

Sources:Radio Times 28 March 1964 and 8 October
1966Pop Went the Pirates II by Keith Skues
(Lambs’Meadow Publications 2009)Radio Caroline: The True Story of the Boat
that Rocked by Ray Clark (The History Press 2014)
With thanks to
Robin Carmody for helping me track down a copy of the 1964 Radio Times

5 comments:

The BBC have now published details about the 2-part Radio 2 documentary titled 'They Didn't Fade Away-50 Years of the Pirates'. The first edition airs on Easter Monday: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2014/16/r2-50-years-of-pirates-monday.html

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About Me

Hailing originally from Hull and spending most of my life in East Yorkshire I'm now resident in France.
For over 30 years I've been interested in radio, tv and film and have an archive of off-air recordings and radio-related material.
I'm not the Andy Walmsley that designs sets or produces tv programmes.
Professionally I worked in Local Government.
My wife Val works for Beaux Villages Immobilier.